Victor Lindelof could now be a Stoke City player, report A Bola in their Christmas Eve edition. The 22 year old Swedish central defender is on the verge of a €45m January transfer to Manchester United according to the Portuguese media, but things could have been very different indeed.
At the age of 17, Lindelof went for a trial with Stoke City, and the English club had the option to buy him for a relatively modest €350k. However, Lindelof didn’t do enough to impress Tony Pulis and others at Stoke City and so they passed up the opportunity up and Lindelof made his way with Benfica’s youth side.
A Bola say Stoke ‘won’t even want to believe’ the rumours of a €45m transfer to Manchester United, feeling they’ll have lost out on both the player and a potentially huge transfer fee after he’d played for them for a few years.
Benfica themselves can be considered lucky, having almost agreed to loan Lindelof to Middlesbrough at the beginning of this year.
